


De La Fortuna

by firebirdschild



Category: Andrew Lang - Fandom, Brothers Grimm - Fandom, English Nursery Rhymes, Fables, Fables - Willingham
Genre: Community: 31_days, Gen, Re-writing His Story, Weaving history out of partial cloth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 02:31:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/831698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firebirdschild/pseuds/firebirdschild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Colonel Bearskin understands Blue.  Maybe that's why he keeps him so close.</p>
            </blockquote>





	De La Fortuna

**Author's Note:**

> This one's for LJ user bane_6, who egged me on to write more Fables, particularly to write something about Blue.

"Hold, damn you!” Bearskin bellowed as he watched the doors to the castle bulge ominously. He turned quickly to address his aide-de-camp. “Take over the defenses, Blue. I need to be down there, working with the engineers and artificers to shore up our defenses.” The heavy furred cloak - the colonel’s signature as he was never seen without it - slapped against his thighs as he strode away swiftly, not even waiting Blue’s reply.

But then, he didn’t have to. This was Blue. faithful fighter and bugler for Bearskin’s Free Company. He’d been there when they’d managed to take back the hamlet of Boxen. He had sounded the order to close the trap on the Adversary’s forces the had won them the day at Ruby Lake. It’d been Blue’s keen eye that saved Bearskin from losing his sword arm during the Battle of Oakcourt. 

This was Blue. Faithful, trustworthy, unflinching comrade. Self-effacing to a fault, Bearskin knew that the younger fable would never have accepted the praise as such. But he was a lynchpin, an integral part of their fighting forces, a stalwart bastion of quiet heroism made only better by how vehemently he denied that he was any such thing. 

Perhaps it was for that very reason, that inherent innocence and goodness that Bearskin shielded the younger fable so often. 

He’d joined their company like any other fable, falling in to fight side by side with Bearskin’s troops as they held the Adversary’s advance a painstaking inch at a time, trying desperately to buy time for others to escape. Bearskin hadn’t noticed him at first, caught up as he was in the larger picture, troop movements and tactics swirling before his minds’ eye to dance a deadly waltz as he fought to out-think the Adversary’s most cunning generals. But day after day, Blue had been there, a skin of cool water and a fresh shirt waiting in both hands as he stood beside the Colonel’s tent at the end of each day’s battles. 

Eventually, Bearskin had realized that the younger fable was listening, watching, trying to learn. He fell into the habit of thinking through his strategies aloud as he stood before his map rolls each night. He positioned the bugler’s signal corps closest to his own battlefield outposts each day, affording the younger fable the opportunity to continue watching.

And watch he did. Eyes bright, Blue watched. And he learned.

The day Blue saved the rest of the signal corpsmen from being cut off by a breakout on the flank, he’d earned himself a permanent place by Bearskin’s side. And okay, perhaps in Blue the colonel saw a reflection of his younger self, the brash orphaned veteran who’d once made a roadside bargain for riches with a goat’s cloven hooves wearing a green frock coat and topper. 

But those riches had given him a comfortable life, allowing he and his bride to live in comfortably tranquility for many years. Until the Adversary. 

And maybe that was why Bearskin kept him close. Maybe in Blue, the colonel hoped for the opportunity to rewrite history. To re-write his own story. Perhaps Blue could have the happy ending...


End file.
